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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

USA! USA!

I've seem comments on here that it's not OK to say that, but if you are a US citizen then I think you damn well should be proud of this and I'll applaud anyone who makes space work. It's frikkin' hard.

When I see a Soyuz launch I think "Go, Russia" and I felt similar things when India, China or Japan launch rockets. Just today Ariane put a satellite in space. Go, Europe!

Hell, as a Brit I'm proud of Prospero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospero_(satellite)

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Absolutely. We're proud of our football teams, why not be proud of our space teams? I only wish we could stir the general public to equal levels of excitement for space as we can for sport.

> We're proud of our football teams, why not be proud of our space teams?

Because at some point we realized that we can only be proud of our own achievements.

Sadly most people never realize that and so they root for nations, sport teams and so on as a supplement. Mostly to identify with and also (in this process) to put others down.

We (or most of us) need an identity and most of us never develop one for ourselves, that does not need an outside entity to feel strong/good/important/validated enough.

Nations should die and not exist. Shouting nations names with pride is shameful and dumb. Nationalism kills. It’s an awful, toxic ideology.

Death to all nations. May no nations exist in the future.

(If you get to spew your ideological bullshit I get to spew my own deeply held and utterly impractical ideological bullshit believes. No, seriously, I want nations to not exist eventually. I think the world would be vastly better without them.)

I'm curious if, as an alternative, you'd rather see decentralization (smaller population units), some kind of global superstate, or something else entirely?

We've all seen the poisons of nationalism, but I wonder if what one might call "tribalist" tendencies are so easy to vanquish - assuming one even wants to.

> I've seem comments on here that it's not OK to say that,

Oh man. My kingdom for this thread not starting again.

Better than shouting would be to actually push legislators to fund space programs better. Most of these programs are run on less than 1% of overall government budgets.

Shouting seems like a good way to do that. Political machine in western countries is focused on pandering to the public, so if public (shows that it) wants space, space they'll get.

Because realy, it is an exclusive either-or choice between shouting or pushing for better funding?

Or.. Both?

Minor correction: Ariane -> ESA (European Space Agency). Ariane is the name of the rocket (and 'Arianespace' the name of the company that does the actual launching for ESA, but that's just part of ESA with a different name).

BTW, I saw they have a Soyuz manual on their website: http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services-soyuz/Soyuz-Users... [pdf]

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